Freescale Semiconductor To Demo LTE In Mobile Handsets

As Motorola considers spinning off its handset unit, it could do well to look at a previous spin-off. Freescale Semiconductor may be showing off the future of mobile handsets next week when it demonstrates Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Freescale said its LTE technology is working in an end-to-end manner from cellular handsets through cellular networks. The company said it can demo peak data rates of 96 Mbps on downlinks and 86 Mpbs on uplinks. The technology enables streaming high-definition video.

Freescale, which was spun off from Motorola in 2004, said it developed its new technology specifically to capitalize on LTE. In addition to high data rates, the architecture features low clock speeds and low power consumption. "Our ability to demonstrate streaming HD video at such high data rates illustrates both the growing maturity of the LTE specification and our unique implementation," said Freescale's Tom Deitrick in a statement.

Deitrick, who is senior VP and general manager of Freescale's cellular products group, indicated the company is working with service providers to commercialize LTE. The high-speed wireless infrastructure is essentially an enhancement to UMTS, currently in widespread use by wireless carriers. Many service providers, including Verizon Wireless and its equity partner Vodafone, have said they plan to move to LTE in the future.

Freescale said it utilizes custom processors with microcoded engines for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to cope with LTE's high-speed data requirements.

On the network side, Freescale said various RF power amplifiers, programmable digital signal processors, and PowerQUICC communications processors have been tuned to LTE. The company's LTE infrastructure features coupled Layer 1 and Layer 2 LTE radio processing.

After Motorola spun off Freescale, the semiconductor operation was acquired and taken private by a group of private equity funds including the Blackstone Group and the Carlyle Group.

In recent days, Motorola's new chief executive, Greg Brown, has taken direct control over the company's troubled handset unit and is focusing on selling or spinning off the division. The handset operation, which has rapidly been losing market share to Nokia, Samsung and LG, is Motorola's largest operation.